Thursday, August 11th, 2016 | Carolin Hagelskamp, Ph.D.

The Public Agenda research team is spending the summer digging deep into 66 interviews we conducted with elected officials across the United States. We’ve been speaking with these officials since early 2015 regarding their views of and experiences with participatory budgeting (PB).

Through these interviews, we’ve gathered rich insights into on what motivates officials to take on PB and what it means to experiment with this innovative form of public engagement.

We spoke not only to officials who brought PB to their communities, but also to many who either decided that PB was not for them or who had heard about PB but not yet considered it for their jurisdictions. In short, we had frank conversations with PB advocates and skeptics!

We will publish a report on this research in the fall. In the meantime, we want to share some of the most inspiring and provoking one-liners we found in our data regarding what PB means to these public officials.

These quotes – from officials representing eight cities across the U.S. – highlight what a multi-facetted democratic process PB can be, as well as the many ways it may impact people, communities and government.

Ten Key Talents for Better Public Participation Part 8

Last week, we discussed issue framing, which helps leaders present information and describe options to participants. This week, we explore how to best sequence discussions and write discussion materials that foster productive, interest-based dialogue.

As we noted last week, these three skills foster participation efforts that give citizens more of what they want (problem solving, civility and community) and treat them like adults in the process.

Sequencing Discussions

Many participation processes require some kind of agenda or guide that establishes a helpful, flexible structure for addressing a particular issue or problem.

The formats vary by length: some of these processes bring participants together for only an hour or two, while others include a number of sessions that take place over the course of an entire day or multiple meetings spread over several weeks. For the most part, these processes require facilitation, a skill we’ll discuss later in this series.

From years of experimentation, a successful sequence has emerged for these kinds of guides and the discussions they support:

An initial discussion or session that helps the facilitator get the group started, guides the group through the process of setting ground rules, provides discussion questions aimed at eliciting the personal experiences of participants, and sometimes includes scenarios or cases to help the group relate the issue to their own lives.

One or more middle discussions that help the group explore the main arguments being made about the issue. The middle sessions are organized around more far-reaching questions such as: “What are the root causes of the problem?” or “What should our goals be?” Middle sessions often contain an outline of the main viewpoints about the issue, written in plain, jargon-free language. These views could include expert opinions or the main proposals of policymakers. They might also reflect the main answers being given to the question, voiced by citizens, experts and officials alike.

How
political idealism leads us astray (Vox)In
a profound and persuasive new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a
Diverse Society, the political philosopher Gerald Gaus shows that visions of
political perfection are bound to lead us astray. Gaus’s argument is
forbiddingly technical, but it’s not merely academic. It matters a great deal
to the way we think about practical policy advocacy and presidential elections.
And if your political identity is built around a dream of an ideally just society,
Gaus’s argument is shattering.

Public Opinion

How
Today’s Political Polling Works (Harvard Business Review)There’s
no complete agreement about what factors should weighted: if a poll has a
low proportion of Democrats, or Republicans, should weighting be used to
correct for it? Decisions like this give some pollsters the opportunity to push
their results one way or the other, for partisan purposes, or to avoid being
too far from what other polls are saying. As polling averages have become more
prevalent, some pollsters have become nervous about putting out results that
are too far from that average, leading them to weight strategically to get
their data back towards the mean, or, in some cases, to choose not to release
results that look weird. As a result, the polls, in the aggregate, can miss
shifts in public opinion.

Thursday, August 4th, 2016 | Allison Rizzolo

Arriving at her dermatologist’s office last week, my friend Emily discovered her health insurance network had changed. The doctor she'd visited for many years was no longer in network.

Naturally concerned about how much the appointment would cost her, she asked the receptionist. The receptionist didn’t know but offered to call Emily’s insurance company. The insurance company told her that part of her appointment would not be covered by her deductible, but they couldn’t tell her how much that would cost. All Emily knew was that an appointment that should have cost a co-pay of $20 would likely cost her $400, perhaps more. Emily said thanks and left.

Health care leaders, advocates, researchers and policymakers are trying to limit these sorts of frustrating experiences by improving price transparency in health care. States including Oregon and Florida have passed legislation calling for increased transparency in the prices of health care providers. Insurers are developing tools and websites with price and quality information for customers. For-profit and nonprofit companies and organizations are doing the same.

Ten Key Talents for Better Public Participation Part 7

Getting people to the table is not sufficient for improved public participation. The table must also be set in a way that gives citizens more of what they want (problem solving, civility and community) and treats them like adults in the process. This requires participation leaders to think more deeply about how to provide information and describe options.

Three skill sets – issue framing, sequencing discussions and writing discussion materials – are especially useful to this work. We’ll dedicate this week’s post to the first of these skills – issue framing. Look for a discussion of sequencing and writing next week.

Issue Framing

Photo by Mario Mancuso via Flickr.

In his book, Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann (1922), a noted writer, reporter, and political commentator, remarked that “The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do.” With this comment, Lippmann was getting to the concept of issue framing. Just as how a work of art is framed affects how we see and value it, so too does how an issue is framed affect how we perceive and assess it (for more information on framing, see the Frameworks Institute 2002).

In a political context, issue framing means presenting (or sometimes spinning) an issue in a way that is most likely get the most agreement from others.

In a public participation process, however, issue framing means something quite different. It means presenting an issue in a way that allows people to explore different definitions of the problem, different explanations for why the problem has emerged and different solutions to the problem.

Democracy

Public
Policy and the Blame Game (Governing)Instead
of working to solve problems like underfunded pensions, too often we spend our
time and energy pointing fingers.

Public Opinion

The
great irony about the issue upending U.S. politics
(Wonkblog)Opposition
to TPP is the most prominent symbol of anti-free trade sentiment that seems to
have upended the 2016 presidential campaign. Yet most Americans actually agree
that free trade is a good thing — and support it.

Opportunity

Engagement

Event
combines 'Pokemon Go' with civic engagement (Ellwood City Ledger)Chakayla Hyland has been playing the mobile device-based game, along with her two children and some of her friends, just like millions of other people. She decided to use the game to rally the community to another activity: a neighborhood cleanup. She hopes they'll pick up any litter they find, especially at gyms and stops.

Thursday, July 28th, 2016 | Public Agenda

Public Agenda is fortunate to have committed and engaged donors, and we are truly appreciative of their support. Our goal is to build a community of supporters dedicated to strengthening the democratic process and finding workable solutions to our most pressing national and local concerns.

Lisa Belsky (center) and family

Each month we will highlight a donor and share with you why they support Public Agenda. Meet Lisa Belsky. Lisa is a longtime donor to Public Agenda. Lisa's mother was Deborah Wadsworth, a former president, board member and board chair of Public Agenda. Deborah cared very deeply about Public Agenda and shared that passion with Lisa.

In Deborah's honor, the was created. The fund is designed to identify and address concerns determined by a particular community and create a collaborative nonpartisan space to develop solutions. Lisa is honoring Deborah's legacy as a second-generation Public Agenda supporter.

My mother, Deborah Wadsworth, introduced me to Public Agenda and its work in the early 1980s. I quickly became an admirer of its mission and programming. A few years later, as a freshman in college with a desire to contribute in the civil sector, I lobbied Public Agenda for an internship and worked for several successive summers, predominantly as a research assistant.

Ten Key Talents for Better Public Participation Part 6

Although public participation projects rarely include formal conflict resolution processes, a general sense of how to manage conflict can be invaluable for building coalitions and facilitating meetings.

Participation leaders may face deep divisions and histories of conflict between city and county governments, school systems and governments, advocacy groups and federal agencies, developers and neighborhood leaders, elected officials from different political parties, unions and employers, and people of different racial or ethnic groups. They are also likely to face conflicting views about an issue under discussion and what ought to be done about it.

Understanding the basics of how to manage those differences can go a long way toward improving public participation. Two skills are particularly relevant to managing conflict: understanding positions and interests, and principled negotiation and interest-based problem solving.

Understanding Positions and Interests

Positions are what a person or group wants, or the demand a person or group is making.

Interests are the needs, values or concerns that underlie a position – they are why a person or group wants something.

For any given issue, people generally have only one position but many interests, with some interests being stronger than others. People with conflicting positions often share basic interests, which can form the foundation for constructive discussions and potential solutions.

Democracy

'Politics
Has Become Celebrity-Driven': How 2016 Surprised Political Thinkers (NPR)Over
the last month, we asked a group of political scientists and analysts how 2016
is changing how they think: what conventional wisdom is gone now; what
surprised them? Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of these answers revolve around
the Trump phenomenon, but others say we may have to rethink what voters want —
and how to measure those attitudes.

Opportunity

Why everyone
is so mad: 99% of post-recession jobs went to those who went to college
(Quartz)A
new report might suggest why people are so angry in a world that should be
experiencing much less turmoil as it recovers from the Great Recession. Jobs
have come back back in post-recession America—but they’re reserved almost
exclusively for people who went to college. Georgetown University’s Center on
Education and the Workforce put out an extensive report this week revealing
that while the US created 11.6 million new jobs after the recession, 11.5
million of those went to individuals with at least some college education.

Bernie
Sanders is right the economy is rigged. He’s dead wrong about why. (Vox)Sanders
thinks Koch and his billionaire comrades did it, more or less. Koch thinks an
active, hands-on approach to economic regulation — an approach Sanders strongly
favors — has allowed interest groups to capture the regulatory process and rig
markets in their favor. Sorry, Bernie fans: Charles Koch is a lot closer to the
truth.

These days, most local public officials recognize the value of deeper engagement with their constituents. Yet the conventional formats they have to engage treat citizens like children rather than adults. Take the typical public meeting for example, in which people have two minutes at an open microphone to speak to officials.

A more effective approach is one in which both parties see each other’s insights and concerns as equally valued. How can local officials transform their engagement efforts so they resemble an adult-adult relationship?

This question resonated with participants in a recent workshop I delivered with my colleague Matt Leighninger. The workshop was our very first "Public Engagement Strategy Lab,” an interactive day-long opportunity for leaders to transform and reinvigorate their public engagement efforts. We offered the Public Engagement Strategy Lab in conjunction with the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, as a pre-conference event for the Frontiers of Democracy Conference in Boston.

Moving toward a more equal dynamic between officials and the public is a long slog. One part of the process is transforming the “two minutes at the mic” public meeting standard. We walked participants through the latest tools and techniques in engagement that can reinvigorate public meetings, including online tools as well as face-to-face formats.

Another common challenge local officials often face: the “usual suspects” dominating most public meetings. Conventional engagement often attracts only a small number of extremely strident voices. At the Strategy Lab, we talked about how to bring large, diverse numbers of people to the table.